Adventure Log, Session 1 Elitheris Gets to Port Karn
General Summary
Elitheris woke up before the sun crept over the horizon. It was predawn, and twilit, the lightening sky providing plenty of illumination for her to see by. From her bedroll laying next to a fallen log, she could see the small lake that she had camped beside. Mist curled off of it in the gloom, the tendrils of fog filtering through the rushes that surrounded the water’s edge.
She could hear the morning chirping of bugs, and the occasional plop of a fish, jumping to grab some insect for its breakfast. The slight breeze sighed through the reeds, rubbing them together. The calls of birds echoed in the trees, although she couldn’t actually see any of the colorful birds. Between the stalks of the reeds, she could see a stalking heron striding slowly through the water near the shore.
Surrounding the lake was jungle, although the spot she chose for her campsite for the last eightday or so was a grassy clearing. She suspected, based upon the amount of rocks under her bedroll, that the thin layer of soil beneath her wasn’t very supportive of jungle plants. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been a clearing at all, only more jungle.
Her campsite was simple: a campfire, a smoking rack, a lean-to made of woven branches and reeds, and beneath that, her bedroll. She lived simply; she didn’t need much in the way of conventional comforts.
The circle of rocks that surrounded her campfire held only burnt wood and a few stubborn embers. She rose, but on some clothes, and kneeled at the fire to breathe some life back into it. Soon it was lit, and flames licked greedily at the fresh sticks she’d added. Smoke rose, and she positioned the smoking rack in the path of it. The meat strips still there needed a bit more processing, and she noticed that there were fewer strips there then when she had gone to sleep the night before. Scavengers had snitched some of the meat when the fire had gone out and the protective smoke had disappeared.
She swore good-naturedly. If she’d had a second tarp, she would have rigged it up to cover the smoking rack. But she was used to having some of her kills stolen by crows and other opportunistic critters.
The fire now providing some warmth in the cool morning, she looked over the lake. Dragonflies and smaller insects skittered over the glassy surface of the water, occasionally becoming some fish’s breakfast. She smiled. It was a nice, beautiful morning, especially now that the sun was peeking over the hills to the east, illuminating the reeds in a warm, golden light that made the morning fog rising from the water look especially magical.
She’d been on her own, living in the forests and jungles of the Altasirya River valley, using her skills and wits to survive, for the last several decades. Her mind still recoiled from the events that had precipitated that self-imposed exile, the horror her young Elven mind was still not fully able to process or forgive.
Elitheris wasn’t sure how long she’d been on her own. Elves didn’t perceive time the same way that the shorter-lived peoples did. To an Elf, it was more fluid and fuzzy, and anything less than several hours weren’t really recognized as individual units. It was one reason that Elves had trouble making friends with the Humans, Orcs, Goblins, and Hobbits that made up most of the other peoples of the Tondene Empire. Dwarves were a little easier, from that standpoint, as they at least usually lived a few centuries. Dwarven friends weren’t usually dead by the time their Elven friend visited them again. Human lifespans were but a blink of an eye to an Elf.
She had left what remained of her village of Celumarauca shortly after the small moon, Calinorië, or Jypra, as it was more commonly known, was destroyed in some kind of explosion. That explosion had caused some sort of ripple effect that had caused what should have been a simple spell to go horribly awry, leading to her self-imposed isolation.
Since then, Elitheris had lived the life of a hermit, supporting herself with hunting and gathering, occasionally going into a village or town to sell hides, furs, or surplus meat, in exchange for a bit of coin or goods in trade. But for the most part, she avoided civilization, shying away from others. She just didn’t seem to do well around other people, although she was starting to become better at it, even if she found that acknowledgment surprising and uncomfortable.
Despite the peaceful beauty of the lake, it was time for her to move on.
She broke camp, packing away the meat still on the rack. The rack would stay, a contraption of sticks and bark twine. She’d build another at her next campsite. Her tarp and bedroll stashed back on her pack, she took her quiver and bow and checked her snares, left the night before. They had netted a rabbit and a nutria, although the nutria was still struggling against the wire around its throat. She dispatched it quickly, ending its suffering, and disarmed the empty snare. There was no reason to kill something she wouldn’t be around to take advantage of.
She dressed the kills, saving the hides, and wrapping the meat in the oilcloth tarp for cooking later. With the few greens and berries she had left over from the gathering she’d done the day before, she had enough food for two days. It would do nicely.
She headed east, generally following the direction of the great river Altasirya, although she was actually kilometers away from it. The river valley in this area was hilly, and covered in thick jungle that she had to cut her way through on some occasions. Other times, she just climbed a tree and moved along the branches from tree to tree, taking what the Elves colloquially called “the high road”. Elves had an inner sense of balance that made that kind of movement easier for them.
The jungle wasn’t without dangers, however, and Elitheris had to be careful. There were wild animals, and animate plants that could surprise the unwary. And some of those animals and plants used magic in one way or another, or had one or more of a variety of toxins and venoms. The jungle wasn’t a place for those who weren’t careful. She’d learned that the hard way, all those decades ago. One had to watch where they stepped, and think several moves in advance.
Elves had it a bit easier than the other peoples of Velyri where this was concerned. They had, after all, developed most of the dangerous plants millennia ago, as part of the defenses that were common around Elven settlements. So Elitheris was very familiar with most of them, and could easily avoid the most dangerous ones. But even so, sometimes she would get surprised, and the painful reminder made her more careful the next time.
Animals she could avoid mostly by going up into a tree, although she tried very hard to not go into areas that might be the hunting grounds of the more dangerous beasts. When that failed, her bow could discourage most animals from messing with her. There were easier food sources for them than an angry Elf with claws that could reach a hundred meters away.
The jungle was thick, and little light reached the ground level. It was late afternoon when she reached a section of jungle that was open enough to see the sky. The sun was in her eyes as she walked.
She’d gone almost another 100 meters when she realized that she wasn’t heading eastward. Huh, she thought. I must have gotten turned around in the jungle. I wonder how long I’ve been going in the wrong direction?
She shrugged, and looked around. The landscape, what she could see of it through the jungle vegetation, was very hilly. Most of the time she was on some kind of slope. It was getting late, and time to make a camp. She’d head east again in the morning, hoping she hadn’t backtracked too much.
It didn’t take long for her to find a suitable spot to camp. She made a fire, lighting it with the spell of Ignite Fire, the little flame appearing to emerge from her fingertip. Smoke rose from the damp wood, but it eventually caught fire, and soon her campfire blazed merrily away. She roasted the rabbit, and spent the next hour making another smoking rack for the nutria meat, which she cut into thin strips, laying them on the rack.
She whispered the words to the Guide Smoke cantrip, and kept the smoke in a virtual, magical chimney that enclosed the rack. It also had the benefit of keeping the smoke from blowing into her eyes.
The next morning, she headed east again. She could hear wolves howling in the distance, and she strung her bow. It wouldn’t do to be surprised. She even nocked an arrow, holding it in place with her bow hand. She continued her progress through the dim jungle understory.
She stopped. Odd, she thought. The shafts of sunlight coming through the trees is angled the wrong way. She had supposedly been traveling eastward, which meant that at midmorning, it should have been angled into her eyes. But according to what she could see, she was headed in more of a southerly direction. She shook her head. I’ve got to pay more attention to where I’m going! She again started back on an easterly course.
Jungle wolves were smaller than their forest brethren, the better to maneuver through the dense undergrowth, but they were still dangerous. She thought she heard something behind her, and she spun around, drawing the arrow back as she did. Nothing. Just jungle. She turned back, releasing the tension on the string, continuing on.
There was a rustling of leaves, and a quick dark shape lunged at her, the wolf’s jaws clamping down on her calf. She stumbled back with a cry of alarm. Her layered linen quilted gambeson armor protected her, the wolf’s teeth biting into fabric, not flesh. She could feel the strength of the jaws, though, and knew that they’d eventually pierce the tightly woven fabric, no matter how many layers there were. She twisted her leg out of its toothy grasp, and looked up just in time to see several more leaping out of the undergrowth towards her, growling and snarling.
Shit! she thought. Up! There was a tree branch above her, and she leaped up to it, adrenaline letting her grasp it in one hand long enough to transfer her bow to her jaws. She used her now-free hand to help her pull herself up to the branch.
The wolves overshot her position, skidded in the leaf duff and moist soil of the jungle floor, and turned towards their prey.
Elitheris’ branch was only about two meters off the ground, and within striking range of the leaping wolves. She scrambled up the tree to a higher perch as the wolves leaped up to try to get her. They didn’t succeed, and she found herself crouching at the crotch of two branches about four meters up, much higher than the wolves could jump. One made it up to the branch she’d originally had been on, but it was too narrow, and the wolf wasn’t really built for climbing trees, and it slipped off, turning the fall into a descending jump down to the ground. It snarled in frustration.
The four wolves circled the tree, growling at her, waiting for her to fall out of its branches. They tried leaping, scrabbling at the bark with their claws, but to no avail. After several moments, they stopped, milling about the base of the tree.
Well, she thought, this could be better. She had to drop the arrow when she moved the bow to her mouth, but she pulled a second one, nocked it, and tested the draw. She grimaced. Dammit, I can’t get a full draw in this position.
But she hoped that the partial draw would be enough. It should be, she thought. It’s not like they are wearing armor. She grinned, drew the arrow back as far as the tree and her crouching stance would allow, and loosed it into what she thought was the leader.
The arrow sped downward, hitting the wolf on the side just behind a shoulder blade. It yelped, biting at the wooden shaft, whining when it jiggled the arrow in the wound.
The recoil made her have to steady herself, but she managed to not fall out of the tree.
But she hadn’t been able to shoot at full draw, so the arrow didn’t go in too deep, and with another pained yelp, the arrow fell free as the wolf pulled on it with its jaws. Blood trailed down its side, and it growled up at Elitheris.
But Elitheris had a second arrow nocked, and she sighted down its length. She released it, the bow arms snapping forward again, propelling the arrow with a thwack! This one slammed through the wolf’s skull, pushing its head down before its body followed in a slump. It hadn’t even had a chance to yelp.
The other three wolves bounded into the jungle, disappearing quickly into the undergrowth. Elitheris smirked. But those wolves were still out there, somewhere. She stood up in the juncture of the two branches, looking around. She could see a pile of stacked stones, covered in vegetation, in the distance through the trees. She traced the lines of the branches of the trees in that direction, seeing a pathway along them that she could use without too much difficulty and avoid having to go to ground level.
She made her way outward from the tree trunk, moving along the branch until it started to bend too much, at which point she leapt from that branch to one on the next tree. That branch flexed under her weight as she landed, but didn’t break, and she rode it upward as it rebounded before moving in towards the trunk. She dodged and ducked branches as she went, careful not to let them push her off the branch. She stepped around the trunk, climbing up a bit to a branch more or less opposite the one she had landed on.
She continued in this way until she got close enough to see that the pile of stacked stones were the remains of an old stone tower. She saw two wolves run into what used to the be the front door, now just an opening with the remains of rotted wood hanging from some iron hinges. She could hear the chattering of monkeys from the upper section of the tower, and she could see a troupe of monkeys in the trees that overhung what was left of the second floor. About half of the roof of the tower was gone, as were the upper courses of the stones on that side. Monkeys leaped around both the tree and the second floor.
They noticed Elitheris in the neighboring tree, and redoubled their efforts to scare her off. Their clever little hands threw nuts, sticks, small stones, and even their own feces at her. She was out of range of most of it, but the tower was a curiosity she was interested in exploring. The monkeys, annoying and messy as they were, didn’t seem particularly dangerous.
One brave little guy had circled around to her tree, and jumped on her back, screeching in her ear as it tried to grab and pull it off of her head. “Ow!” she cried, her ear hurting from its strong fingers with their tiny fingernails.
She was bigger and stronger than it was, although it was tenacious. She grabbed it by the back of the neck, and shouted, “No!” Into its face. Then she set it down on the branch at her feet, and it ran off in a panic. It was likely very glad the big nasty monster Elf didn’t eat it.
“Okay, you little shits,” she said, “you leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Got it?”
The monkeys’ only answers were a series of loud screeching cries. Resigned, Elitheris sighed, annoyed at the noise. She hopped from the tree branch to the ruined wall, looking down into the second floor study. It was a collection of ruined furniture, debris, and vegetation. Sections of the wooden flooring, some of it still covered by the tattered, moldy remains of a rug, seemed rotted out. Every step she took was measured and tested. She didn’t want to fall through to the first floor; she could hear the growling of wolves over the screeching of the monkeys. Those monkeys kept an almost constant barrage of sticks and nuts thrown in her general direction. She had to shoo them off now and again, but mostly, they stayed out of her way.
The remains of ruined books lay scattered on the floor, and one or two still laid on the bookshelves that took up about a quarter of the wall. All had been in the weather for ages, and what paper was left fell apart when disturbed. Even the leather book covers were moldy and worm-eaten. What was left of them wouldn’t have been fit as fuel for a campfire.
She saw a liquor cabinet, set against an interior wall and partially blocked by rubble from the roof cave-in. She shoved that aside, and the stuck cabinet door gave with a rusty squeal when she pried it open with her dagger. Inside were several glass bottles, some broken, and some filled with some kind of nasty, opaque sludge. Two bottles, however, seemed to be in good condition.
The first was a squarish bottle of apple brandy. “What have we here?” she asked herself, brushing cobwebs and debris off of the label. According to what she could read, it had been bottled over two hundred years ago. The liquid inside was clear, and the bottle seemed to still be sealed. She set that on top of the cabinet. She rooted around in there for a moment, and found a second bottle that seemed like it was still good. It was a bottle of gin, also over two hundred years old. She set that next to the other one. She looked for anything else of value in the liquor cabinet, but didn’t find anything. She put the two bottles into her pack.
Even if I don’t drink them, they might be worth something, she figured.
There was another cabinet next to the liquor cabinet. It was built similarly, out of wood, but since this one hadn’t been covered by rubble, it had gotten a bit more weathered. It was locked. She shrugged, and gave it a good, swift kick.
The old, partially rotted wood cracked, and the doors sprung open. Inside were some books. Despite the lock, the cabinet hadn’t kept out all of the weather of the last couple hundred years, and most of the books were so water damaged that they were no longer readable. But she could tell that they were primarily thaumatological tomes on Mind Control and Necromancy.
She flipped through the books, one by one. Each had the name “Magus Goradyn” written on the inside front covers. Well, at least I know who it was who used to live here. She hadn’t seen any evidence of zombies in the tower, so she felt thankful for that. If there had been the awakened dead here, I wouldn’t have to worry about wolves and monkey poop.
She did find two books that were still in decent enough condition to be useful. Both were spell books, things which she had some experience with.
Celumarauca hadn’t had any wizards when Elitheris was growing up, so even though she had the talent for magic, there had been no one to teach her. She’d had to learn from the last wizard’s spell books. When her parents had found out she was sneaking off to learn how to cast spells from the books, they had tried to put a stop to it.
Magic was dangerous, especially to the minimally trained. It was powerful, but fickle, and even the best wizards, trained by even greater thaumaturgists, could make mistakes. Her parents didn’t want her endangering herself by trying to learn by puzzling out what the books were trying to say. Most mages needed training in theoretical thaumatology before they were allowed to start learning actual spells; it helped the student to have at least an idea of how magic worked before trying to manipulate it.
But Elitheris was stubborn, willful, and downright rebellious. She kept sneaking off with the books, to isolated spots in the forest, and read through the books, learning a few spells the hard way. And yes, she made mistakes—several of them. The worst involved a rabbit, a wound, and a botched healing spell. It took months for Elitheris to get its pained squealing out of her head after she had accidentally tripled the size of the cut in its side. She’d been forced to quickly cut its throat after failing to put its insides back inside.
She shivered with the memory. It always seemed to sneak up on her and blindside her when she wasn’t expecting it. Although I should have, she thought ruefully. Given that one of them is the spell of Major Healing. The other was the spell of Disorient. She had a use for those. She already knew, to a basic level, the spell of Minor Healing, so she should, when she got a chance to read through the book of Major Healing, be able to learn it well enough.
She put the two thick tomes into her pack. She was running out of room; the two bottles and the two large books took up a lot of volume. They weren’t all that heavy, but they were bulky. From her standing position, she could see a glint of red in the cabinet. She crouched down in front of the opening, and removed a few of the destroyed books. It was a ruby, and she could tell that it was magical. It had that odd characteristic that seemed to make one feel like they shifted sideways mentally or something. She never truly understood it, but she got the same feeling most of the time when she saw enchanted items.
She picked it up, letting the four carat gem roll around in her fingers. Odd that it wasn’t in a piece of jewelry. Once she touched it, she knew it was a powerstone, a receptacle for storing extra mana. “Well now,” she said aloud, “I can use this!” She unbuckled her gambeson, opening it up so she had access to her shirt. Or, more specifically, a pocket in her shirt. She slipped the ruby powerstone into the pocket, then rebuckled her gambeson. She searched inside the cabinet for a little while longer, but found nothing else of value.
The stupid monkeys kept raining nuts and twigs upon her. One bounced off her head, but fortunately she wore her gambeson cap as well, and the layered cloth made pretty good padding. She was lucky the monkeys were small, and unable to throw heavy objects.
She opened the door in the wall that led to the other room on this floor of the old tower. The roof was still intact over this section, so it was in better shape. Plus, the door stuck in its frame, and took a bit of effort to open. Even had the monkeys known how doorknobs worked, they wouldn’t have had the mass or strength to open it. But the monkeys had apparently come in through the windows.
The room had worktables against all the walls, leaving the center of the room free to move around in. There was broken glass everywhere, some with dried blood on it. The monkeys had probably gotten in here and broke the glass, getting cut up until they finally learned to avoid it. Elitheris felt sorry for the poor little primates. She moved about the room carefully, kicking broken glass out of the way of her feet. She didn’t want to step down on some glass spike an cripple her foot. What I need is a broom!
There wasn’t one, so she made do by stepping carefully. Most of the cabinets under the work tables were open and empty, cleaned out long ago by the curious monkeys. But in two she found some small boxes with latches. Inside were some vials and jars, with some handwritten notes on them.
Most seemed to be healing potions or ointments of one sort or another. But one she recognized as a potion that would allow someone to carry a heavy weight over a long distance, one made the subject run faster, and another she didn’t recognize. It had the word “Pirithous” written on it. She’d have to visit an alchemist to find out what that one was. Overall, though, they were very useful.
She also discovered a medallion, on a tarnished silver chain. She could tell it was magical; again, it gave off that odd “sideways” sort of feeling, like an internal lurching in no direction in particular. She held it up in front of her face. It was a gold disk about five centimeters in diameter, inscribed with runes and sigils. Some she recognized from her reading of the magic books. The sigils she recognized were the ones for “move” and “mind”. She wasn’t sure of the others that were inscribed on the disk.
She put it on. Nothing seemed to happen, and she was fully able to take it off again. At least it isn’t cursed, she thought belatedly, a shiver of fear running through her. If it had been cursed, she would have been doomed due to her unthinking donning of the necklace. She likely wouldn’t have been able to take it off, or she would have had bad luck, or become sterile, or even been turned into a toad.
I am so stupid! she thought. That was dangerous, you dumbass. But she was reluctant put it on again, even if it turned out to be harmless. She had no way of figuring out exactly what it was, except by wearing it and seeing what happened. She held it in her hands, weighing the pros and cons. The cons won. It was too risky. She had no idea what it did. For all she knew, it might summon clouds of mosquitoes.
There was a stairway down to the first floor, but a tree had grown into the window and filled the space with its branches and leaves. Time and the damage to the roof added more debris, so much that a monkey could have fit through, but certainly no wolf could have. Well that explains how the monkeys can live up here with the hungry wolves downstairs. But, I want to see what’s down there. Besides wolves, that is.
She surveyed the pile of debris, mostly vegetative, but with stones and beams from the fallen roof and a scattering of slate shingles She pulled on a beam, and it pivoted out, taking a small pile of stone blocks with it. She broke off a few branches, her knife helping with some of the more stubborn ones. Soon she had a space she could squeeze through along the outer wall. Bow in one hand, arrow in the other, she squeezed into the opening, pushing aside some stubborn branches.
As she was moving past the tree branches that blocked most of the stairway, she could see into the dimness below four pairs of eyes, attached to growling wolves upset that their home was being invaded. Shit! she thought, as one and then another of the wolves broke into a run and came at her. She backed through the branches again as the pair of wolves bounded up the stairway, snarling.
One of them managed to leap and bite at her arm before she could squeeze past the debris. She plunged the arrow she held into its writhing body. It yelped in pain and let go of her arm, dropping back down to all fours on the curving stairway.
But the second wolf squirmed through the opening, its eyes on Elitheris as she scrambled back. The monkeys screamed, seeing a wolf in their territory in addition to the humanoid invader. Elitheris ignored their rain of twigs and nuts, as did the wolf.
Elitheris scrambled up the wall, the wolf nipping at her heels, leaping up to try to get its teeth on her and to prevent her from getting away. The second wolf had wormed its way past the pile of debris, the arrow now pulled out of its shoulder. Blood matted its fur. It charged towards her, leaping up to bite at her foot, but it couldn’t get a good purchase on her boot.
The Elf hopped up a few stone courses, gaining altitude to avoid their attacks. The two wolves tried frantically to get at her, but couldn’t, their paws raking the old stone of the tower walls. She pulled out another arrow from her quiver, nocked it, and drew the string back, aiming at the nearest wolf.
Twang! went the bow, and the arrow leapt forth, slamming into the first wolf as it attempted to leap higher using the remains of a bookcase. It fell heavily to the ground, a finger-thick arrow lodged deeply within its chest. It lay unmoving, its sides quivering as it struggled to breathe its last.
The alpha female wolf, larger than the rest, squirmed through the opening, and charged towards Elitheris. She also looked like she was trying to use a bookcase as a step to help her get up to the top of the crumbled wall.
Elitheris snapped off a quick shot, aimed by instinct, and the arrow flicked into the alpha female’s forelimb near the foot. The foot gave out, and she crashed shoulder first into the flooring, pushing the rotted rug ahead of her like a bow wave. She whimpered, and got up, shakily standing on three legs, and hobbled back through the opening, yelping as the 80 centimeter arrow shaft caught on the entangling branches. Elitheris could hear the wolf slide and bump down the stairs as it lost its balance on the curving steps.
That left only the last wolf, who stood below her, barking and growling at her. She nocked another arrow, drew it back, and loosed. The arrow slammed through its rear leg, and the impact spun it about as it fell to the wooden floor with a whimpering yelp. She followed it with a second arrow to the head, putting it out of its misery.
She hopped down from the wall, and peered past the obstruction blocking most of the stairwell. She could see the alpha female wolf, favoring her wounded forelimb, and a smaller wolf run out of the opening, into the jungle. She turned back to the dead wolves, and recovered her arrows. She didn’t care so much about the arrows as a whole; her main focus was on the arrowheads. She could build the rest of the arrow, but she couldn’t replace the arrowheads. She had to get those from blacksmiths in towns.
After wiping down the arrows, she cautiously checked to make sure there weren’t any wolves downstairs. She couldn’t see or hear any, so she slid past the obstruction, and crept down the stairs, listening intently.
The first floor was even more of a mess than the second floor. The main space was a combination living room and kitchen. A broken door led to the privy, and the closet door was mostly rotted away and hung by a single hinge. The floor was covered in debris, most of it fuzzy with wolf hair. The remains of an old, cracked ceramic oven sat opposite the front doorway. The remains of furniture, the stuffing mostly gone and what was left was more mold than stuffing, lay scattered about the room.
Much of the stuffing had been moved to a pile under the stairs, which looked like some kind of nest. It appeared as if the wolves liked a soft place to sleep. There was more wolf hair there than anywhere else. They had certainly used it to lie around on.
Elitheris walked over to it, curious to see if they had taken anything else besides stuffing. Her boot heel hit hollow sounding wood, a very different sound than the dirt and debris-covered stone that the rest of the floor was constructed of.
Ah! What have we here?
She shoved some of the pile of debris to the side with her foot. Under it was a a wooden trap door. Looks like I found the root cellar! She didn’t expect to find any food, not after two hundred years or so, but maybe there might be something interesting down there anyway. She couldn’t not look.
She pushed the debris off of it, then opened it up. There was a stairway leading down. Judging from the very old cobwebs that had seemed to almost hermetically seal the trap door, no one had been down here in a very long time. She lit her lantern. Its warm yellow glow illuminated the area around her, and she went down the stairs.
The stairway stopped at a short stone-lined hallway that ended in a door. It was unlocked, and behind it was indeed a root cellar. But not only that, but there was a large wine rack along the far wall. It was big enough to hold over a hundred bottles of wine, although most of the bottles were broken. Eight bottles remained whole. She lifted one out of its rotten wooden cradle. She thought she recognized the label. She couldn’t remember ever having any, but the name of the vintner was familiar to her.
Although he’s likely dead by now. Sounds like a human name. Although I suppose his family might still be in the wine business. She hefted the bottle in her hands. Bulky, and too heavy to carry. She put it back on the rack. She turned the bottle so the label was facing up.
Also in the room were shelves, with glass and ceramic jars. Any food in them was long turned to dust, or worse. She could see clusters of fuzz, in various colors, on many of the jar lids. Gross, she thought. There was a crate of glassware, similar to what remained in the alchemy lab upstairs.
She looked around. Besides the shelves, the wine racks, the crate, and the remains of a couple of broken chairs, there wasn’t much in the root cellar. Hello, what’s this? The wine rack wasn’t a wine rack. It was two wine racks, set next to each other. But they weren’t lined up straight. It offended her sense of aesthetics, and she tried to push it into place to line it up properly. It wouldn’t move. She looked around, trying to find the obstacle. She didn’t see anything. She reached through it to feel along the back side, and found a part that seemed loose. Maybe it’s this thing getting in the way? She tried pushing it back into place.
She heard a click. The wine rack moved outward, pivoting on a set of hinges. “Huh,” she said, stepping back and moving it out of the way. Beyond it, on the wall, she could see faint outlines of a panel. She moved her lantern closer, moving it back and forth to see how the light fell upon the panel.
Yep, she thought, a door. She pushed on it, and she heard a second click. The panel popped out a centimeter. Aha! She curled her fingers around the edge, and pulled. It swung open, revealing a short hallway that opened up into a room.
In it was a desk, a chair, and, facing both of those, another chair. With straps. She didn’t like the look of that. Behind the chair were three cells, small, closet sized spaces with iron doors and barred windows. In one of the cells was a skeleton, covered in cobwebs. Poor sucker, she thought. Probably starved to death down here, if that Goradyn fellow just up and left.
Elitheris didn’t like the place. Bad things had happened here, she figured. There was another door, and she opened it. This room was larger, about eight meters on a side. In one corner, by the door, was a chair and a small table. The rest of the room was empty.
Nope, she thought, not empty. She raised her light, to try to get a better view. On the floor was a pentagram, made of silver poured into channels carved into the floor. So, demon summoning? What other gross things was he into? I would have expected more zombies, considering the necromancy texts upstairs. But really, except for the torture chair, the cells, and this pentagram, the place seems normal enough. Surely he must have used them? She looked around, but after however many hundreds of years, there was no evidence left. She shrugged. Not her problem.
She didn’t find anything of value besides the bottles of wine, which were too heavy and bulky to carry. She left. She was trying to get to Port Karn, a big city. She didn’t really like big cities, or small ones, for that matter, but she was running low on arrowheads. She only had about a dozen arrows. Those wouldn’t last long, even if she fished them out of her kills.
She headed eastward, towards Port Karn. She’d never been there before. When she had left the ruins of her home town, she had gone north originally, making her way through the forests, avoiding the larger settlements, and generally being antisocial. It wasn’t that she didn’t need anybody, it was that she couldn’t face them. What she had done had left a deep wound of sadness and shame, and she felt that people would be able to see it in her face.
Every time she saw a reflection of herself in the still waters of a pond, she could see the guilt. It was almost as if, personified, it stood over her, looking over her shoulder into her eyes. She no longer spent much time looking at her reflection.
She spent several years in the forest, then a few more in the prairie to the west. She kept going west, until the ground dried out and the lush prairie grasses turned into scrub grass and weeds, then to dry earth, with only the occasional desert plant. She turned southward, following the edge of the desert until it became forest again. She much preferred the forests. She then worked her way southward, crossing the Altasirya River valley multiple times. Over the nearly eighty years that she spent as a wandering hermit, she got to know the lay of the land in that valley pretty well. She would be surprised to know that she had covered probably a full sixty percent of the entire Altasirya watershed.
Hey! What gives? She looked around. The sunlight, piercing through the forest canopy, slanted from high to the right to low on the left. It should have been at her back. South? Again?
She didn’t understand. She was a good navigator. How did she not realize she was going in the wrong direction? How long had she been going in the wrong direction? She could understand having to make course corrections when moving around hills and outcrops, but she was usually really good about getting back on the right track. She shook her head.
She turned to her left. East! Dammit!
She found a good place to camp, and she pitched her tarp under a deadfall which provided both shelter and concealment. She made a small fire, nibbling on the strips of smoked nutria. She regretted not taking the three wolf hides, but she couldn’t have carried them anyway. She was already pretty laden. One day, I’ll have to get myself a pack horse.
The next day, she broke camp, strung her bow, and again headed east. This time, she didn’t seem to have any problems. She stayed on her proper heading.
She wasn’t sure what it was that alerted her. Something flickered in the corner of her eye, or a shadow darker than it should have been moved in a funny way. Whatever it was, it saved her life, for a pair of insectoid creatures attacked. They were about the size of large pumas, vaguely catlike, but chitinous, with a pair of mantis-like striker limbs that they used to snare prey. But that wasn’t what made them particularly dangerous. Sure they were fast, the strikers licking out in quick strikes, and their chitin shells were highly resistant to attacks. But their main ability was their visual displacement.
They were flickerbugs, creatures who, over the eons, had developed the ability to project their image off to one side or another. And the image would appear randomly here and there, so one never knew exactly where they were until it was too late.
The pair charged at Elitheris, their ambush somehow foiled by their prey. It didn’t matter, they kill their victim anyway. Elitheris jumped up, grabbing a tree limb and levering herself one-armed up onto the branch. But not quite fast enough; one of the flickerbugs struck with its sharp striking limb, hitting her in the buttocks. The layers of linen, quilted into a very effective, if sweltering, armor, held, and while she would have a bruise, that would be the extent of it.
The two flickerbugs jumped at her, flailing at her with their mantis-like limbs, forcing her to dance along the branch to avoid them. There weren’t any other branches that she could climb to.
She was stuck. She cast the spell of Fire Creation. She hated that spell. It was the spell that had caused her so much trouble. But it was effective. She clutched at her chest, where the pocket was. Where the ruby powerstone was. The mana flowed from the stone, into her, down her arms, to her fingertips, where little flames licked across her fingernails. She pantomimed a large ball in front of her, and a ball of fire grew in that space. She moved her hands apart, and the ball of fire fell, right onto one of the flickerbugs.
It screeched, a high, piercing twitter, and it ran off, trailing flames and smoke.
She had been hoping to get both of them with the flames, but they’d been moving around too much, and she was never really sure of where they were exactly. It leaped up at her again, striking with its sharp clawed striker. She moved just in time to avoid it smashing her kneecap, and its hooked claw slammed into the wood of the branch. It hung there, stuck, writhing, trying to free its limb.
Elitheris took advantage, she knew where it was now, at least, its image still showed it hanging, and she remembered where it had actually hit. She quickly drew out an arrow, nocked it, and pulled back the string. She flexed her fingers, and the arrow flew to the right of the image of the flickerbug. She heard it crunch through chitin, and the image jerked with the impact.
“Hah!” she cried. “Got you!” She quickly got another arrow ready. The flickerbug image shifted, appearing three meters in front of her at ground level. It jerked its claw free with a splintering sound, and it turned and ran off into the forest, following the lingering smoke.
There went another one of my arrowheads, she thought glumly. Now I have what, eleven?
She stayed in the tree for a while before finally climbing down.
Two nights later, while camping, and before she fell asleep, she noticed an odd crystalline growth on a tree. They were kind of pretty, actually, a milky whitish color, like opal. She got the impression that sparkling motes puffed out from it, which fell slowly to the ground like flakes of snow. Then she realized that the crystals were actually growing before her eyes, and the pretty sparkles were some kind of spores.
Crystals were starting to grow from the ground around the tree, at a rate that was much, much too fast for geological processes. This was something else. It was more like an infection, and it was spreading before her eyes.
She stood, trying to figure out a way to stop the crystals from spreading any farther. She grabbed a stick, stuck the end in the campfire, and waited until the tip was aflame. She walked over to the tree that was sprouting the crystals, and touched the fire to them.
The fire flowed over the surface of the faceted objects, and the Elitheris could see the sparkling dust winking out when the flames got too close to them. The crystals themselves didn’t seem too damaged by the flame on the end of her stick. But the spores, or whatever they were, were susceptible.
She looked around. No other tree seemed to have the crystal plague, which seemed to be growing about a meter up the trunk. Crystals clustered at the base, where the sparkling dust had fallen earlier. Fire seemed to work, she just needed more of it. But she didn’t want to burn a forest down…again.
She grabbed her hatchet. She started chopping the top of the 20 centimeter diameter tree down, above the crystal growth. That was so she could burn the trunk, and not worry too much about the fire spreading. She’d already started one forest fire, she didn’t need to start another. Soon the top of the tree toppled, crashing through the neighboring trees in a loud cacophony of snapping branches.
She cleared some undergrowth away, then cast the spell of Fire Creation. She pulled the mana from herself this time, and, like before, the mana came from her center, flowed down her arms to her fingertips, and a ball of fire formed in the air before her. She let it fall onto the stump. It singed the tree trunk as it fell, then it blazed at the base of the tree, crisping the dried leaves there. The spores were consumed, and the crystals began to melt before catching on fire. She watched the blaze to make sure it didn’t get out of control. When the crystals were gone, she kicked soil over whatever parts of the flames still burned after she ended the spell.
She walked around with her canteen, pouring water over any remaining embers. They sizzled and disappeared in gouts of steam. As she was walking around the area, making sure there were no embers left, she saw, carved in a nearby tree, a face. It was rather crude, but Elitheris could tell that it was made with purpose and determination, even if the artistic skill was lacking.
At the base of that tree were a handful of glass beads. Odd, she thought. Some kind of offering or sacrifice? And was it connected to the crystal infection? She looked around the area again, this time more closely. No other faces or carvings were found, nor were there any other offerings. It can’t be a coincidence that the crystals and the face were here, out in the middle of nowhere. They had to be connected somehow! She sighed. Without more information, the mystery would have to wait.
The next morning she broke camp, and continued her eastward journey. It was late afternoon when the jungle abruptly ended, and the vista before her became a series of farms and fields stretching to the horizon, mostly bordered by hedgerows of trees. It was midsummer, a few days after the summer solstice and the new year, so the fields were starting to be harvested.
She could see work crews here and there in the fields, reaping early grain. Some fields hadn’t fully ripened yet; she assumed that they would be taken care of later. She just stood there at the edge of the jungle, staring out at the vast area that she knew had been jungle, not terribly long ago, all cleared to make farms so that the large city of Port Karn wouldn’t starve.
She shivered, in a combination of horror and awe. Horror, because of what it did to the natural world, which the Elves revered. And awe because of its sheer scale. Without climbing a tree or finding some hilltop vantage point, she couldn’t see very far through the hedgerows. They blocked her sightline. But she knew they extended very, very far. She was still at least two days away from her destination.
Elves had never really farmed in that particular manner, with huge tracts of lands devoted to a single crop. They’d never needed to; their population was never high enough to warrant it. Elven settlements rarely were larger than a few thousand people at the most. Elven agriculture would likely be considered more like “intensive hunting and gathering” than actual farming. But their low population pressure never required something like what Elitheris stared at.
From where she stood watching, her Elven sight could pick out mostly Humans in the work crew, with a few smaller forms that could have been Hobbits or children. After watching for a while, and seeing that the small forms wielded scythes just as some of the taller folk did, she figured them to be Hobbits. No one in their right mind would let children run around with scythes, would they?
To the northeast, past some low, rolling hills, a smudge of smoke denoted the location of a settlement. It was likely the main settlement of the area, providing food, shelter, and amenities to the workers she saw toiling in the fields. But the pall of smoke was much too small to be the city of Port Karn. She could see other signs of smoke to the north, and more on the far side of a lake to the southeast. She could just make out some buildings nestled in some trees that stood out like an island in the sea of tilled land.
She didn’t really want to venture out into those open fields yet, so she turned and moved back into the jungle to find a good campsite. She would tackle the civilized area, filled with people she didn’t know, tomorrow.
She woke. It was still night, but she could hear something that sounded like some animal getting into her things. She cracked an eye open, and saw that it wasn’t an animal. Oh shit, she thought, some guy is stealing my stuff!
She struggled to extricate herself from her bedroll as quickly as possible, shouting “Hey! Stop that!”
The man shot from his crouched position and bolted off into the jungle. She pulled on her gambeson jacket and leggings, then slipped her feet into her boots. Then she checked her pack. The bottles were still there, as was the latched box of elixirs, which she had put at the bottom, under her change of clothing. Hey, where did this come from? She pulled out a bloody dagger.
She looked at it in the darkness, made only gloomy by her Elven night vision. She didn’t seem to be missing anything. Either he didn’t get the chance to actually steal anything, or he was leaving me this dagger for some reason.
She quickly rolled her bedroll, and folded her ground tarp. The tarp went into the pack; the bedroll was strapped to the bottom of it. She kept the dagger out and handy. Then she followed him, moving as quickly as she could without losing his trail.
He wasn’t hard to track; Elitheris was actually pretty good at tracking game. And this guy was running, and not doing anything to hide his trail. She also could see much better in the dark than he could. There were spots in his trail where, in the dark, he’d stumbled into trees. Elitheris hadn’t seen him, but she could tell that he was Human. Most of the other races had decent night vision. Elves weren’t even at the upper end of the scale.
His trail followed the jungle/field boundary, likely due to his lack of decent night vision. He was dependent upon the light of the remaining moon, Cendinalta, or, as the Humans called it, Kynett. Cendinalta was a few days past full, and waning, but it shed enough light for the man to see well enough to make his way northward along the boundary. She sped up a bit, and soon she could see him up ahead, walking now, occasionally looking back over his shoulder.
But Elitheris had been keeping to the shadows just inside the jungle, and she knew that with the moon up, the shadows of the jungle would be absolutely black, keeping her hidden. It didn’t take her long to get closer to him, and soon he stopped to relieve himself. He looked around, but didn’t see anyone. Elitheris crept closer, silently, stalking him. She’d let him finish his business, then….
The man put himself back in his pants, buttoning them up. Then he felt a weight at his back at the same time a blade touched his throat. He froze.
“Want to tell me what you were doing in my pack?” Elitheris hissed at him.
A series of calculations went through the man’s brain, very quickly. He was being held by a woman, and she hadn’t cut his throat yet. She had asked him a question. And she seemed smaller than he was. It all pointed to her not necessarily wanting him dead. So he took a chance, and slammed his elbow back, hoping he could break her grip before she could slit his throat. His elbow connected with her face.
She reeled back, one hand going to her bloodied nose and cut lip. The other held the knife, but it was no longer at his neck. She struck with the knife, plunging it into his thigh. “Who are you?” she asked.
His only response was a cry of pain as the blade sliced the muscles in his leg. It collapsed under his weight, and he went down to one knee, one hand in a fist, the other trying to staunch the flow of blood that stained his pant leg.
“Why did you try to steal from me?” she asked, dodging his flailing fist.
“Didn’t steal,” he said, swinging his fist at her again. It failed to connect, and Elitheris struck him on the head with the pommel.
He groaned in pain.
“What were you doing then?”
He remained silent, and she struck him in the forehead with the pommel of the knife again, opening up his scalp and causing him to topple over. She’d knocked him out.
Elitheris stood over the unconscious man, with no answers. But she didn’t want to kill him. “What am I going to do with you, you little bastard?” With some rope from her pack, she tied his arms behind his back.
She used some bandages from her pack to bind his wounds, muttering expletives the whole time. Some of her blood, dripping from her nose, stained his shirt. She didn’t care, but it was a reminder that she should probably do something about it. She pinched her nose, and tasted blood from her cut lip. She waited patiently for the bleeding to stop.
Elitheris looked around, and saw that there were crews in some of the fields, even in the middle of the night. She could tell that they were Goblins and Orcs, both species that were at home at night, and quite often nocturnal. The Orcs especially preferred the night; their vision included heat, so during the day they were often overwhelmed if not wearing dark glasses. Orcs didn’t do well in sunlight in general, as their photosensitivity made them physically ill.
She dragged him towards a pasture nearby. She could see a shepherd there, watching over his sleeping flock.
It was an Orc, and when she started moving towards him, he turned and watched her approach. His sheep were quiet, and there didn’t seem to be any predators nearby, even this close to the wild jungle.
Elitheris dragged the unconscious man all the way to the split rail fence that surrounded the pasture. She wasn’t sure if the fence fully surrounded the pasture—fallow field, actually, she saw as she got close—but it was irrelevant.
She saw the Orc watching her from the other side of the fence. “Hi,” she said. “This guy tried to steal from me, and I could use some help getting him to the nearest town.”
“Hmmph,” the Orc said. “I’m watching the sheep.”
“Where is the nearest town?”
The Orc raised a hand, pointing northward. “That way, about a kilometer. There is a Rural Watch office there you can bring him to.”
“Uh, thanks, but I could really use some help lugging him all that way.”
The Orc thought about it, sighed, and said, “Fine. I’ll help you. For four marks.”
Four marks was the cost of a decent meal, or a very good mug of ale.
“Okay.” The Elven woman fished in her coin pouch, pulling out a silver coin. She flipped it to the Orc, and he caught it, smiling through his tusks at her as he pocketed it.
“Alright,” he said, hopping over the fence. “Let’s get this scumbag to the Watch.” He lifted the unconscious man onto a shoulder. “This way,” he said to her, before striding towards where he had said the town was.
“Thank you,” Elitheris said. “I’m Elitheris, by the way.”
“Grumsh.”
“I woke up to this guy pawing through my pack as I slept.”
“Hmmph.”
“He ran off when I shouted at him. Then I followed him, finally catching up to him back there. Gave me a bloody nose.”
“And a cut lip, and what would seem to be a bruise on your cheek.”
She winced. “Yeah, he got the best of me there.”
He chuckled, a deep rumbling. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s the one who’s unconscious and being carried like a grain sack.”
Elitheris laughed. “You’re right.”
They approached town, a series of dark, low houses, with the occasional larger farmhouse. “Welcome to Smokebury,” Grumsh said. “Sorry it’s under such grim circumstances.”
“Thanks.”
“The Rural Watch office isn’t too far now,” Grumsh said, pointing with his free arm. “It’s on the main street, just up ahead there. The building with the tall lit torch.”
The main thoroughfare of the village was dirt, with sidewalks of wood running up both sides for most of its length. Down some side streets that they passed, Elitheris could see more houses, wattle and daub with thatch roofs. Some were houses with wood siding, but they were in the minority.
The pair got to the Rural Watch office, a small building with a two and a half meter long torch in front. It was about halfway burnt down. Grumsh unceremoniously dropped the unconscious man onto the boardwalk. The fall woke him up, for he groaned in pain.
“Alright,” Grumsh said, pounding on the door. “I’m off to my sheep. Have a good evening.”
“Thanks again,” Elitheris said. The Orc simply nodded, and walked back the way they had come.
The door to the office opened, and she was met by a Goblin, wearing a maroon and gold colored gambeson uniform. His green ears twitched, and he looked first at the groaning man who was starting to try to get up, then up to the Elven woman.
“What have we here?” he asked, hands on hips.
“This guy,” she kicked him in the gut with her toe, “tried to steal from me, and left me this bloody dagger.” She held up the dagger. She hadn’t bothered to clean it off.
The Goblin watch officer looked at the downed man again, noting the bandage on his leg, and the red stain it contained. “His blood?”
Elitheris, guiltily, said, “Now, yes. But it was bloody when he left it in my pack.”
“Okay, lady, you are going to have to start at the beginning.”
“Right. Okay. I was camping in the jungle, not far from the fields to the south of here. I woke to find this guy,” she kicked him again, resulting in him groaning again, “stealing from my pack. Or at least that is what I thought he was doing. He didn’t actually steal from me; instead, he put this dagger into my pack. It was bloody. I scared him off, and followed him. I wanted to ask him questions, but he wasn’t interested in answering any. We fought, I won. I got some help getting him here, and here we are.”
The Goblin was grinning. “Nice. Thanks for bringing him to us. Grab a leg. Let’s get him inside a cell.”
The Goblin and Elitheris each grabbed a leg. The man was awake enough now to writhe and fight, but his arms were bound behind his back, and he really couldn’t do much against his two opponents. “Lemme go!” he shouted.
They ignored him. A second watch officer sat behind a desk, an Orc, who stood when they came into the room. He hurried over to the short row of cells, opening one, then stepping out of the way. The Goblin and Elitheris dragged the man into the cell, then the Orc closed and locked it.
The Goblin brushed his hands in a show of a job well done. “Now, we’ve got some questions for you, ma’am.” He turned to his Orcish companion. “Ulnorg, let’s get her info down.”
“Sure thing, Tejakkis,” Ulnorg replied, opening a ledger on his desk and getting a pen ready. “Go.”
Tejakkis asked Elitheris some questions, getting her name, her business, and the events of the evening. Ulnorg wrote it down in the ledger. “You might have done us a favor this night,” he ended. “A lady named Lynette had been stabbed earlier this evening. It sounds like you might have captured her murderer. Good job.”
“Yeah,” Ulnorg said, “we’ll take it from here. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
“Glad to help.” Helping a community was something she hadn’t done in a long, long time. It felt…good. It had been a while since she’d been able to experience that. She hadn’t been sure if it would even be possible to feel that again. These two Rural Watch officers seemed genuinely pleased with her. She blushed.
Tejakkis looked—really looked—at her for what seemed to be the first time. He noted her features, and her gear. Her bow was beautiful, even if it used Elven design aesthetics. He also noted her quiver, half empty, and the worn but cared for state of her clothes. “I see you can take care of yourself. If you want a job, the Rural Watch could use someone like you.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m just a traveler. I don’t stay in one place too long. I’m actually on my way to Port Karn.”
Tejakkis smiled, showing his sharp teeth. “Well, if you change your mind, just let us know. Or any Rural Watchman.”
“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.” She turned and left. As she did, she could hear the two watchmen starting up on their new prisoner.
She followed the road northward, out of town.
She could hear the morning chirping of bugs, and the occasional plop of a fish, jumping to grab some insect for its breakfast. The slight breeze sighed through the reeds, rubbing them together. The calls of birds echoed in the trees, although she couldn’t actually see any of the colorful birds. Between the stalks of the reeds, she could see a stalking heron striding slowly through the water near the shore.
Her campsite was simple: a campfire, a smoking rack, a lean-to made of woven branches and reeds, and beneath that, her bedroll. She lived simply; she didn’t need much in the way of conventional comforts.
The circle of rocks that surrounded her campfire held only burnt wood and a few stubborn embers. She rose, but on some clothes, and kneeled at the fire to breathe some life back into it. Soon it was lit, and flames licked greedily at the fresh sticks she’d added. Smoke rose, and she positioned the smoking rack in the path of it. The meat strips still there needed a bit more processing, and she noticed that there were fewer strips there then when she had gone to sleep the night before. Scavengers had snitched some of the meat when the fire had gone out and the protective smoke had disappeared.
She swore good-naturedly. If she’d had a second tarp, she would have rigged it up to cover the smoking rack. But she was used to having some of her kills stolen by crows and other opportunistic critters.
The fire now providing some warmth in the cool morning, she looked over the lake. Dragonflies and smaller insects skittered over the glassy surface of the water, occasionally becoming some fish’s breakfast. She smiled. It was a nice, beautiful morning, especially now that the sun was peeking over the hills to the east, illuminating the reeds in a warm, golden light that made the morning fog rising from the water look especially magical.
She’d been on her own, living in the forests and jungles of the Altasirya River valley, using her skills and wits to survive, for the last several decades. Her mind still recoiled from the events that had precipitated that self-imposed exile, the horror her young Elven mind was still not fully able to process or forgive.
Elitheris wasn’t sure how long she’d been on her own. Elves didn’t perceive time the same way that the shorter-lived peoples did. To an Elf, it was more fluid and fuzzy, and anything less than several hours weren’t really recognized as individual units. It was one reason that Elves had trouble making friends with the Humans, Orcs, Goblins, and Hobbits that made up most of the other peoples of the Tondene Empire. Dwarves were a little easier, from that standpoint, as they at least usually lived a few centuries. Dwarven friends weren’t usually dead by the time their Elven friend visited them again. Human lifespans were but a blink of an eye to an Elf.
She had left what remained of her village of Celumarauca shortly after the small moon, Calinorië, or Jypra, as it was more commonly known, was destroyed in some kind of explosion. That explosion had caused some sort of ripple effect that had caused what should have been a simple spell to go horribly awry, leading to her self-imposed isolation.
Since then, Elitheris had lived the life of a hermit, supporting herself with hunting and gathering, occasionally going into a village or town to sell hides, furs, or surplus meat, in exchange for a bit of coin or goods in trade. But for the most part, she avoided civilization, shying away from others. She just didn’t seem to do well around other people, although she was starting to become better at it, even if she found that acknowledgment surprising and uncomfortable.
Despite the peaceful beauty of the lake, it was time for her to move on.
She broke camp, packing away the meat still on the rack. The rack would stay, a contraption of sticks and bark twine. She’d build another at her next campsite. Her tarp and bedroll stashed back on her pack, she took her quiver and bow and checked her snares, left the night before. They had netted a rabbit and a nutria, although the nutria was still struggling against the wire around its throat. She dispatched it quickly, ending its suffering, and disarmed the empty snare. There was no reason to kill something she wouldn’t be around to take advantage of.
She dressed the kills, saving the hides, and wrapping the meat in the oilcloth tarp for cooking later. With the few greens and berries she had left over from the gathering she’d done the day before, she had enough food for two days. It would do nicely.
She headed east, generally following the direction of the great river Altasirya, although she was actually kilometers away from it. The river valley in this area was hilly, and covered in thick jungle that she had to cut her way through on some occasions. Other times, she just climbed a tree and moved along the branches from tree to tree, taking what the Elves colloquially called “the high road”. Elves had an inner sense of balance that made that kind of movement easier for them.
Elves had it a bit easier than the other peoples of Velyri where this was concerned. They had, after all, developed most of the dangerous plants millennia ago, as part of the defenses that were common around Elven settlements. So Elitheris was very familiar with most of them, and could easily avoid the most dangerous ones. But even so, sometimes she would get surprised, and the painful reminder made her more careful the next time.
Animals she could avoid mostly by going up into a tree, although she tried very hard to not go into areas that might be the hunting grounds of the more dangerous beasts. When that failed, her bow could discourage most animals from messing with her. There were easier food sources for them than an angry Elf with claws that could reach a hundred meters away.
The jungle was thick, and little light reached the ground level. It was late afternoon when she reached a section of jungle that was open enough to see the sky. The sun was in her eyes as she walked.
She’d gone almost another 100 meters when she realized that she wasn’t heading eastward. Huh, she thought. I must have gotten turned around in the jungle. I wonder how long I’ve been going in the wrong direction?
She shrugged, and looked around. The landscape, what she could see of it through the jungle vegetation, was very hilly. Most of the time she was on some kind of slope. It was getting late, and time to make a camp. She’d head east again in the morning, hoping she hadn’t backtracked too much.
It didn’t take long for her to find a suitable spot to camp. She made a fire, lighting it with the spell of Ignite Fire, the little flame appearing to emerge from her fingertip. Smoke rose from the damp wood, but it eventually caught fire, and soon her campfire blazed merrily away. She roasted the rabbit, and spent the next hour making another smoking rack for the nutria meat, which she cut into thin strips, laying them on the rack.
She whispered the words to the Guide Smoke cantrip, and kept the smoke in a virtual, magical chimney that enclosed the rack. It also had the benefit of keeping the smoke from blowing into her eyes.
The next morning, she headed east again. She could hear wolves howling in the distance, and she strung her bow. It wouldn’t do to be surprised. She even nocked an arrow, holding it in place with her bow hand. She continued her progress through the dim jungle understory.
She stopped. Odd, she thought. The shafts of sunlight coming through the trees is angled the wrong way. She had supposedly been traveling eastward, which meant that at midmorning, it should have been angled into her eyes. But according to what she could see, she was headed in more of a southerly direction. She shook her head. I’ve got to pay more attention to where I’m going! She again started back on an easterly course.
Jungle wolves were smaller than their forest brethren, the better to maneuver through the dense undergrowth, but they were still dangerous. She thought she heard something behind her, and she spun around, drawing the arrow back as she did. Nothing. Just jungle. She turned back, releasing the tension on the string, continuing on.
There was a rustling of leaves, and a quick dark shape lunged at her, the wolf’s jaws clamping down on her calf. She stumbled back with a cry of alarm. Her layered linen quilted gambeson armor protected her, the wolf’s teeth biting into fabric, not flesh. She could feel the strength of the jaws, though, and knew that they’d eventually pierce the tightly woven fabric, no matter how many layers there were. She twisted her leg out of its toothy grasp, and looked up just in time to see several more leaping out of the undergrowth towards her, growling and snarling.
The wolves overshot her position, skidded in the leaf duff and moist soil of the jungle floor, and turned towards their prey.
Elitheris’ branch was only about two meters off the ground, and within striking range of the leaping wolves. She scrambled up the tree to a higher perch as the wolves leaped up to try to get her. They didn’t succeed, and she found herself crouching at the crotch of two branches about four meters up, much higher than the wolves could jump. One made it up to the branch she’d originally had been on, but it was too narrow, and the wolf wasn’t really built for climbing trees, and it slipped off, turning the fall into a descending jump down to the ground. It snarled in frustration.
The four wolves circled the tree, growling at her, waiting for her to fall out of its branches. They tried leaping, scrabbling at the bark with their claws, but to no avail. After several moments, they stopped, milling about the base of the tree.
Well, she thought, this could be better. She had to drop the arrow when she moved the bow to her mouth, but she pulled a second one, nocked it, and tested the draw. She grimaced. Dammit, I can’t get a full draw in this position.
But she hoped that the partial draw would be enough. It should be, she thought. It’s not like they are wearing armor. She grinned, drew the arrow back as far as the tree and her crouching stance would allow, and loosed it into what she thought was the leader.
The arrow sped downward, hitting the wolf on the side just behind a shoulder blade. It yelped, biting at the wooden shaft, whining when it jiggled the arrow in the wound.
The recoil made her have to steady herself, but she managed to not fall out of the tree.
But she hadn’t been able to shoot at full draw, so the arrow didn’t go in too deep, and with another pained yelp, the arrow fell free as the wolf pulled on it with its jaws. Blood trailed down its side, and it growled up at Elitheris.
But Elitheris had a second arrow nocked, and she sighted down its length. She released it, the bow arms snapping forward again, propelling the arrow with a thwack! This one slammed through the wolf’s skull, pushing its head down before its body followed in a slump. It hadn’t even had a chance to yelp.
The other three wolves bounded into the jungle, disappearing quickly into the undergrowth. Elitheris smirked. But those wolves were still out there, somewhere. She stood up in the juncture of the two branches, looking around. She could see a pile of stacked stones, covered in vegetation, in the distance through the trees. She traced the lines of the branches of the trees in that direction, seeing a pathway along them that she could use without too much difficulty and avoid having to go to ground level.
She made her way outward from the tree trunk, moving along the branch until it started to bend too much, at which point she leapt from that branch to one on the next tree. That branch flexed under her weight as she landed, but didn’t break, and she rode it upward as it rebounded before moving in towards the trunk. She dodged and ducked branches as she went, careful not to let them push her off the branch. She stepped around the trunk, climbing up a bit to a branch more or less opposite the one she had landed on.
She continued in this way until she got close enough to see that the pile of stacked stones were the remains of an old stone tower. She saw two wolves run into what used to the be the front door, now just an opening with the remains of rotted wood hanging from some iron hinges. She could hear the chattering of monkeys from the upper section of the tower, and she could see a troupe of monkeys in the trees that overhung what was left of the second floor. About half of the roof of the tower was gone, as were the upper courses of the stones on that side. Monkeys leaped around both the tree and the second floor.
One brave little guy had circled around to her tree, and jumped on her back, screeching in her ear as it tried to grab and pull it off of her head. “Ow!” she cried, her ear hurting from its strong fingers with their tiny fingernails.
She was bigger and stronger than it was, although it was tenacious. She grabbed it by the back of the neck, and shouted, “No!” Into its face. Then she set it down on the branch at her feet, and it ran off in a panic. It was likely very glad the big nasty monster Elf didn’t eat it.
“Okay, you little shits,” she said, “you leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Got it?”
The monkeys’ only answers were a series of loud screeching cries. Resigned, Elitheris sighed, annoyed at the noise. She hopped from the tree branch to the ruined wall, looking down into the second floor study. It was a collection of ruined furniture, debris, and vegetation. Sections of the wooden flooring, some of it still covered by the tattered, moldy remains of a rug, seemed rotted out. Every step she took was measured and tested. She didn’t want to fall through to the first floor; she could hear the growling of wolves over the screeching of the monkeys. Those monkeys kept an almost constant barrage of sticks and nuts thrown in her general direction. She had to shoo them off now and again, but mostly, they stayed out of her way.
She saw a liquor cabinet, set against an interior wall and partially blocked by rubble from the roof cave-in. She shoved that aside, and the stuck cabinet door gave with a rusty squeal when she pried it open with her dagger. Inside were several glass bottles, some broken, and some filled with some kind of nasty, opaque sludge. Two bottles, however, seemed to be in good condition.
The first was a squarish bottle of apple brandy. “What have we here?” she asked herself, brushing cobwebs and debris off of the label. According to what she could read, it had been bottled over two hundred years ago. The liquid inside was clear, and the bottle seemed to still be sealed. She set that on top of the cabinet. She rooted around in there for a moment, and found a second bottle that seemed like it was still good. It was a bottle of gin, also over two hundred years old. She set that next to the other one. She looked for anything else of value in the liquor cabinet, but didn’t find anything. She put the two bottles into her pack.
Even if I don’t drink them, they might be worth something, she figured.
There was another cabinet next to the liquor cabinet. It was built similarly, out of wood, but since this one hadn’t been covered by rubble, it had gotten a bit more weathered. It was locked. She shrugged, and gave it a good, swift kick.
The old, partially rotted wood cracked, and the doors sprung open. Inside were some books. Despite the lock, the cabinet hadn’t kept out all of the weather of the last couple hundred years, and most of the books were so water damaged that they were no longer readable. But she could tell that they were primarily thaumatological tomes on Mind Control and Necromancy.
She flipped through the books, one by one. Each had the name “Magus Goradyn” written on the inside front covers. Well, at least I know who it was who used to live here. She hadn’t seen any evidence of zombies in the tower, so she felt thankful for that. If there had been the awakened dead here, I wouldn’t have to worry about wolves and monkey poop.
She did find two books that were still in decent enough condition to be useful. Both were spell books, things which she had some experience with.
Celumarauca hadn’t had any wizards when Elitheris was growing up, so even though she had the talent for magic, there had been no one to teach her. She’d had to learn from the last wizard’s spell books. When her parents had found out she was sneaking off to learn how to cast spells from the books, they had tried to put a stop to it.
Magic was dangerous, especially to the minimally trained. It was powerful, but fickle, and even the best wizards, trained by even greater thaumaturgists, could make mistakes. Her parents didn’t want her endangering herself by trying to learn by puzzling out what the books were trying to say. Most mages needed training in theoretical thaumatology before they were allowed to start learning actual spells; it helped the student to have at least an idea of how magic worked before trying to manipulate it.
But Elitheris was stubborn, willful, and downright rebellious. She kept sneaking off with the books, to isolated spots in the forest, and read through the books, learning a few spells the hard way. And yes, she made mistakes—several of them. The worst involved a rabbit, a wound, and a botched healing spell. It took months for Elitheris to get its pained squealing out of her head after she had accidentally tripled the size of the cut in its side. She’d been forced to quickly cut its throat after failing to put its insides back inside.
She shivered with the memory. It always seemed to sneak up on her and blindside her when she wasn’t expecting it. Although I should have, she thought ruefully. Given that one of them is the spell of Major Healing. The other was the spell of Disorient. She had a use for those. She already knew, to a basic level, the spell of Minor Healing, so she should, when she got a chance to read through the book of Major Healing, be able to learn it well enough.
She put the two thick tomes into her pack. She was running out of room; the two bottles and the two large books took up a lot of volume. They weren’t all that heavy, but they were bulky. From her standing position, she could see a glint of red in the cabinet. She crouched down in front of the opening, and removed a few of the destroyed books. It was a ruby, and she could tell that it was magical. It had that odd characteristic that seemed to make one feel like they shifted sideways mentally or something. She never truly understood it, but she got the same feeling most of the time when she saw enchanted items.
She picked it up, letting the four carat gem roll around in her fingers. Odd that it wasn’t in a piece of jewelry. Once she touched it, she knew it was a powerstone, a receptacle for storing extra mana. “Well now,” she said aloud, “I can use this!” She unbuckled her gambeson, opening it up so she had access to her shirt. Or, more specifically, a pocket in her shirt. She slipped the ruby powerstone into the pocket, then rebuckled her gambeson. She searched inside the cabinet for a little while longer, but found nothing else of value.
The stupid monkeys kept raining nuts and twigs upon her. One bounced off her head, but fortunately she wore her gambeson cap as well, and the layered cloth made pretty good padding. She was lucky the monkeys were small, and unable to throw heavy objects.
She opened the door in the wall that led to the other room on this floor of the old tower. The roof was still intact over this section, so it was in better shape. Plus, the door stuck in its frame, and took a bit of effort to open. Even had the monkeys known how doorknobs worked, they wouldn’t have had the mass or strength to open it. But the monkeys had apparently come in through the windows.
The room had worktables against all the walls, leaving the center of the room free to move around in. There was broken glass everywhere, some with dried blood on it. The monkeys had probably gotten in here and broke the glass, getting cut up until they finally learned to avoid it. Elitheris felt sorry for the poor little primates. She moved about the room carefully, kicking broken glass out of the way of her feet. She didn’t want to step down on some glass spike an cripple her foot. What I need is a broom!
There wasn’t one, so she made do by stepping carefully. Most of the cabinets under the work tables were open and empty, cleaned out long ago by the curious monkeys. But in two she found some small boxes with latches. Inside were some vials and jars, with some handwritten notes on them.
Most seemed to be healing potions or ointments of one sort or another. But one she recognized as a potion that would allow someone to carry a heavy weight over a long distance, one made the subject run faster, and another she didn’t recognize. It had the word “Pirithous” written on it. She’d have to visit an alchemist to find out what that one was. Overall, though, they were very useful.
She also discovered a medallion, on a tarnished silver chain. She could tell it was magical; again, it gave off that odd “sideways” sort of feeling, like an internal lurching in no direction in particular. She held it up in front of her face. It was a gold disk about five centimeters in diameter, inscribed with runes and sigils. Some she recognized from her reading of the magic books. The sigils she recognized were the ones for “move” and “mind”. She wasn’t sure of the others that were inscribed on the disk.
She put it on. Nothing seemed to happen, and she was fully able to take it off again. At least it isn’t cursed, she thought belatedly, a shiver of fear running through her. If it had been cursed, she would have been doomed due to her unthinking donning of the necklace. She likely wouldn’t have been able to take it off, or she would have had bad luck, or become sterile, or even been turned into a toad.
I am so stupid! she thought. That was dangerous, you dumbass. But she was reluctant put it on again, even if it turned out to be harmless. She had no way of figuring out exactly what it was, except by wearing it and seeing what happened. She held it in her hands, weighing the pros and cons. The cons won. It was too risky. She had no idea what it did. For all she knew, it might summon clouds of mosquitoes.
There was a stairway down to the first floor, but a tree had grown into the window and filled the space with its branches and leaves. Time and the damage to the roof added more debris, so much that a monkey could have fit through, but certainly no wolf could have. Well that explains how the monkeys can live up here with the hungry wolves downstairs. But, I want to see what’s down there. Besides wolves, that is.
She surveyed the pile of debris, mostly vegetative, but with stones and beams from the fallen roof and a scattering of slate shingles She pulled on a beam, and it pivoted out, taking a small pile of stone blocks with it. She broke off a few branches, her knife helping with some of the more stubborn ones. Soon she had a space she could squeeze through along the outer wall. Bow in one hand, arrow in the other, she squeezed into the opening, pushing aside some stubborn branches.
As she was moving past the tree branches that blocked most of the stairway, she could see into the dimness below four pairs of eyes, attached to growling wolves upset that their home was being invaded. Shit! she thought, as one and then another of the wolves broke into a run and came at her. She backed through the branches again as the pair of wolves bounded up the stairway, snarling.
One of them managed to leap and bite at her arm before she could squeeze past the debris. She plunged the arrow she held into its writhing body. It yelped in pain and let go of her arm, dropping back down to all fours on the curving stairway.
But the second wolf squirmed through the opening, its eyes on Elitheris as she scrambled back. The monkeys screamed, seeing a wolf in their territory in addition to the humanoid invader. Elitheris ignored their rain of twigs and nuts, as did the wolf.
Elitheris scrambled up the wall, the wolf nipping at her heels, leaping up to try to get its teeth on her and to prevent her from getting away. The second wolf had wormed its way past the pile of debris, the arrow now pulled out of its shoulder. Blood matted its fur. It charged towards her, leaping up to bite at her foot, but it couldn’t get a good purchase on her boot.
Twang! went the bow, and the arrow leapt forth, slamming into the first wolf as it attempted to leap higher using the remains of a bookcase. It fell heavily to the ground, a finger-thick arrow lodged deeply within its chest. It lay unmoving, its sides quivering as it struggled to breathe its last.
The alpha female wolf, larger than the rest, squirmed through the opening, and charged towards Elitheris. She also looked like she was trying to use a bookcase as a step to help her get up to the top of the crumbled wall.
Elitheris snapped off a quick shot, aimed by instinct, and the arrow flicked into the alpha female’s forelimb near the foot. The foot gave out, and she crashed shoulder first into the flooring, pushing the rotted rug ahead of her like a bow wave. She whimpered, and got up, shakily standing on three legs, and hobbled back through the opening, yelping as the 80 centimeter arrow shaft caught on the entangling branches. Elitheris could hear the wolf slide and bump down the stairs as it lost its balance on the curving steps.
That left only the last wolf, who stood below her, barking and growling at her. She nocked another arrow, drew it back, and loosed. The arrow slammed through its rear leg, and the impact spun it about as it fell to the wooden floor with a whimpering yelp. She followed it with a second arrow to the head, putting it out of its misery.
She hopped down from the wall, and peered past the obstruction blocking most of the stairwell. She could see the alpha female wolf, favoring her wounded forelimb, and a smaller wolf run out of the opening, into the jungle. She turned back to the dead wolves, and recovered her arrows. She didn’t care so much about the arrows as a whole; her main focus was on the arrowheads. She could build the rest of the arrow, but she couldn’t replace the arrowheads. She had to get those from blacksmiths in towns.
After wiping down the arrows, she cautiously checked to make sure there weren’t any wolves downstairs. She couldn’t see or hear any, so she slid past the obstruction, and crept down the stairs, listening intently.
Much of the stuffing had been moved to a pile under the stairs, which looked like some kind of nest. It appeared as if the wolves liked a soft place to sleep. There was more wolf hair there than anywhere else. They had certainly used it to lie around on.
Elitheris walked over to it, curious to see if they had taken anything else besides stuffing. Her boot heel hit hollow sounding wood, a very different sound than the dirt and debris-covered stone that the rest of the floor was constructed of.
Ah! What have we here?
She shoved some of the pile of debris to the side with her foot. Under it was a a wooden trap door. Looks like I found the root cellar! She didn’t expect to find any food, not after two hundred years or so, but maybe there might be something interesting down there anyway. She couldn’t not look.
She pushed the debris off of it, then opened it up. There was a stairway leading down. Judging from the very old cobwebs that had seemed to almost hermetically seal the trap door, no one had been down here in a very long time. She lit her lantern. Its warm yellow glow illuminated the area around her, and she went down the stairs.
Although he’s likely dead by now. Sounds like a human name. Although I suppose his family might still be in the wine business. She hefted the bottle in her hands. Bulky, and too heavy to carry. She put it back on the rack. She turned the bottle so the label was facing up.
Also in the room were shelves, with glass and ceramic jars. Any food in them was long turned to dust, or worse. She could see clusters of fuzz, in various colors, on many of the jar lids. Gross, she thought. There was a crate of glassware, similar to what remained in the alchemy lab upstairs.
She looked around. Besides the shelves, the wine racks, the crate, and the remains of a couple of broken chairs, there wasn’t much in the root cellar. Hello, what’s this? The wine rack wasn’t a wine rack. It was two wine racks, set next to each other. But they weren’t lined up straight. It offended her sense of aesthetics, and she tried to push it into place to line it up properly. It wouldn’t move. She looked around, trying to find the obstacle. She didn’t see anything. She reached through it to feel along the back side, and found a part that seemed loose. Maybe it’s this thing getting in the way? She tried pushing it back into place.
She heard a click. The wine rack moved outward, pivoting on a set of hinges. “Huh,” she said, stepping back and moving it out of the way. Beyond it, on the wall, she could see faint outlines of a panel. She moved her lantern closer, moving it back and forth to see how the light fell upon the panel.
Yep, she thought, a door. She pushed on it, and she heard a second click. The panel popped out a centimeter. Aha! She curled her fingers around the edge, and pulled. It swung open, revealing a short hallway that opened up into a room.
In it was a desk, a chair, and, facing both of those, another chair. With straps. She didn’t like the look of that. Behind the chair were three cells, small, closet sized spaces with iron doors and barred windows. In one of the cells was a skeleton, covered in cobwebs. Poor sucker, she thought. Probably starved to death down here, if that Goradyn fellow just up and left.
Elitheris didn’t like the place. Bad things had happened here, she figured. There was another door, and she opened it. This room was larger, about eight meters on a side. In one corner, by the door, was a chair and a small table. The rest of the room was empty.
Nope, she thought, not empty. She raised her light, to try to get a better view. On the floor was a pentagram, made of silver poured into channels carved into the floor. So, demon summoning? What other gross things was he into? I would have expected more zombies, considering the necromancy texts upstairs. But really, except for the torture chair, the cells, and this pentagram, the place seems normal enough. Surely he must have used them? She looked around, but after however many hundreds of years, there was no evidence left. She shrugged. Not her problem.
She didn’t find anything of value besides the bottles of wine, which were too heavy and bulky to carry. She left. She was trying to get to Port Karn, a big city. She didn’t really like big cities, or small ones, for that matter, but she was running low on arrowheads. She only had about a dozen arrows. Those wouldn’t last long, even if she fished them out of her kills.
She headed eastward, towards Port Karn. She’d never been there before. When she had left the ruins of her home town, she had gone north originally, making her way through the forests, avoiding the larger settlements, and generally being antisocial. It wasn’t that she didn’t need anybody, it was that she couldn’t face them. What she had done had left a deep wound of sadness and shame, and she felt that people would be able to see it in her face.
Every time she saw a reflection of herself in the still waters of a pond, she could see the guilt. It was almost as if, personified, it stood over her, looking over her shoulder into her eyes. She no longer spent much time looking at her reflection.
She spent several years in the forest, then a few more in the prairie to the west. She kept going west, until the ground dried out and the lush prairie grasses turned into scrub grass and weeds, then to dry earth, with only the occasional desert plant. She turned southward, following the edge of the desert until it became forest again. She much preferred the forests. She then worked her way southward, crossing the Altasirya River valley multiple times. Over the nearly eighty years that she spent as a wandering hermit, she got to know the lay of the land in that valley pretty well. She would be surprised to know that she had covered probably a full sixty percent of the entire Altasirya watershed.
Hey! What gives? She looked around. The sunlight, piercing through the forest canopy, slanted from high to the right to low on the left. It should have been at her back. South? Again?
She didn’t understand. She was a good navigator. How did she not realize she was going in the wrong direction? How long had she been going in the wrong direction? She could understand having to make course corrections when moving around hills and outcrops, but she was usually really good about getting back on the right track. She shook her head.
She turned to her left. East! Dammit!
She found a good place to camp, and she pitched her tarp under a deadfall which provided both shelter and concealment. She made a small fire, nibbling on the strips of smoked nutria. She regretted not taking the three wolf hides, but she couldn’t have carried them anyway. She was already pretty laden. One day, I’ll have to get myself a pack horse.
The next day, she broke camp, strung her bow, and again headed east. This time, she didn’t seem to have any problems. She stayed on her proper heading.
She wasn’t sure what it was that alerted her. Something flickered in the corner of her eye, or a shadow darker than it should have been moved in a funny way. Whatever it was, it saved her life, for a pair of insectoid creatures attacked. They were about the size of large pumas, vaguely catlike, but chitinous, with a pair of mantis-like striker limbs that they used to snare prey. But that wasn’t what made them particularly dangerous. Sure they were fast, the strikers licking out in quick strikes, and their chitin shells were highly resistant to attacks. But their main ability was their visual displacement.
They were flickerbugs, creatures who, over the eons, had developed the ability to project their image off to one side or another. And the image would appear randomly here and there, so one never knew exactly where they were until it was too late.
The pair charged at Elitheris, their ambush somehow foiled by their prey. It didn’t matter, they kill their victim anyway. Elitheris jumped up, grabbing a tree limb and levering herself one-armed up onto the branch. But not quite fast enough; one of the flickerbugs struck with its sharp striking limb, hitting her in the buttocks. The layers of linen, quilted into a very effective, if sweltering, armor, held, and while she would have a bruise, that would be the extent of it.
She was stuck. She cast the spell of Fire Creation. She hated that spell. It was the spell that had caused her so much trouble. But it was effective. She clutched at her chest, where the pocket was. Where the ruby powerstone was. The mana flowed from the stone, into her, down her arms, to her fingertips, where little flames licked across her fingernails. She pantomimed a large ball in front of her, and a ball of fire grew in that space. She moved her hands apart, and the ball of fire fell, right onto one of the flickerbugs.
It screeched, a high, piercing twitter, and it ran off, trailing flames and smoke.
She had been hoping to get both of them with the flames, but they’d been moving around too much, and she was never really sure of where they were exactly. It leaped up at her again, striking with its sharp clawed striker. She moved just in time to avoid it smashing her kneecap, and its hooked claw slammed into the wood of the branch. It hung there, stuck, writhing, trying to free its limb.
Elitheris took advantage, she knew where it was now, at least, its image still showed it hanging, and she remembered where it had actually hit. She quickly drew out an arrow, nocked it, and pulled back the string. She flexed her fingers, and the arrow flew to the right of the image of the flickerbug. She heard it crunch through chitin, and the image jerked with the impact.
“Hah!” she cried. “Got you!” She quickly got another arrow ready. The flickerbug image shifted, appearing three meters in front of her at ground level. It jerked its claw free with a splintering sound, and it turned and ran off into the forest, following the lingering smoke.
There went another one of my arrowheads, she thought glumly. Now I have what, eleven?
She stayed in the tree for a while before finally climbing down.
Two nights later, while camping, and before she fell asleep, she noticed an odd crystalline growth on a tree. They were kind of pretty, actually, a milky whitish color, like opal. She got the impression that sparkling motes puffed out from it, which fell slowly to the ground like flakes of snow. Then she realized that the crystals were actually growing before her eyes, and the pretty sparkles were some kind of spores.
Crystals were starting to grow from the ground around the tree, at a rate that was much, much too fast for geological processes. This was something else. It was more like an infection, and it was spreading before her eyes.
She stood, trying to figure out a way to stop the crystals from spreading any farther. She grabbed a stick, stuck the end in the campfire, and waited until the tip was aflame. She walked over to the tree that was sprouting the crystals, and touched the fire to them.
The fire flowed over the surface of the faceted objects, and the Elitheris could see the sparkling dust winking out when the flames got too close to them. The crystals themselves didn’t seem too damaged by the flame on the end of her stick. But the spores, or whatever they were, were susceptible.
She looked around. No other tree seemed to have the crystal plague, which seemed to be growing about a meter up the trunk. Crystals clustered at the base, where the sparkling dust had fallen earlier. Fire seemed to work, she just needed more of it. But she didn’t want to burn a forest down…again.
She grabbed her hatchet. She started chopping the top of the 20 centimeter diameter tree down, above the crystal growth. That was so she could burn the trunk, and not worry too much about the fire spreading. She’d already started one forest fire, she didn’t need to start another. Soon the top of the tree toppled, crashing through the neighboring trees in a loud cacophony of snapping branches.
She cleared some undergrowth away, then cast the spell of Fire Creation. She pulled the mana from herself this time, and, like before, the mana came from her center, flowed down her arms to her fingertips, and a ball of fire formed in the air before her. She let it fall onto the stump. It singed the tree trunk as it fell, then it blazed at the base of the tree, crisping the dried leaves there. The spores were consumed, and the crystals began to melt before catching on fire. She watched the blaze to make sure it didn’t get out of control. When the crystals were gone, she kicked soil over whatever parts of the flames still burned after she ended the spell.
She walked around with her canteen, pouring water over any remaining embers. They sizzled and disappeared in gouts of steam. As she was walking around the area, making sure there were no embers left, she saw, carved in a nearby tree, a face. It was rather crude, but Elitheris could tell that it was made with purpose and determination, even if the artistic skill was lacking.
At the base of that tree were a handful of glass beads. Odd, she thought. Some kind of offering or sacrifice? And was it connected to the crystal infection? She looked around the area again, this time more closely. No other faces or carvings were found, nor were there any other offerings. It can’t be a coincidence that the crystals and the face were here, out in the middle of nowhere. They had to be connected somehow! She sighed. Without more information, the mystery would have to wait.
The next morning she broke camp, and continued her eastward journey. It was late afternoon when the jungle abruptly ended, and the vista before her became a series of farms and fields stretching to the horizon, mostly bordered by hedgerows of trees. It was midsummer, a few days after the summer solstice and the new year, so the fields were starting to be harvested.
She could see work crews here and there in the fields, reaping early grain. Some fields hadn’t fully ripened yet; she assumed that they would be taken care of later. She just stood there at the edge of the jungle, staring out at the vast area that she knew had been jungle, not terribly long ago, all cleared to make farms so that the large city of Port Karn wouldn’t starve.
Elves had never really farmed in that particular manner, with huge tracts of lands devoted to a single crop. They’d never needed to; their population was never high enough to warrant it. Elven settlements rarely were larger than a few thousand people at the most. Elven agriculture would likely be considered more like “intensive hunting and gathering” than actual farming. But their low population pressure never required something like what Elitheris stared at.
From where she stood watching, her Elven sight could pick out mostly Humans in the work crew, with a few smaller forms that could have been Hobbits or children. After watching for a while, and seeing that the small forms wielded scythes just as some of the taller folk did, she figured them to be Hobbits. No one in their right mind would let children run around with scythes, would they?
To the northeast, past some low, rolling hills, a smudge of smoke denoted the location of a settlement. It was likely the main settlement of the area, providing food, shelter, and amenities to the workers she saw toiling in the fields. But the pall of smoke was much too small to be the city of Port Karn. She could see other signs of smoke to the north, and more on the far side of a lake to the southeast. She could just make out some buildings nestled in some trees that stood out like an island in the sea of tilled land.
She didn’t really want to venture out into those open fields yet, so she turned and moved back into the jungle to find a good campsite. She would tackle the civilized area, filled with people she didn’t know, tomorrow.
She woke. It was still night, but she could hear something that sounded like some animal getting into her things. She cracked an eye open, and saw that it wasn’t an animal. Oh shit, she thought, some guy is stealing my stuff!
She struggled to extricate herself from her bedroll as quickly as possible, shouting “Hey! Stop that!”
The man shot from his crouched position and bolted off into the jungle. She pulled on her gambeson jacket and leggings, then slipped her feet into her boots. Then she checked her pack. The bottles were still there, as was the latched box of elixirs, which she had put at the bottom, under her change of clothing. Hey, where did this come from? She pulled out a bloody dagger.
She looked at it in the darkness, made only gloomy by her Elven night vision. She didn’t seem to be missing anything. Either he didn’t get the chance to actually steal anything, or he was leaving me this dagger for some reason.
She quickly rolled her bedroll, and folded her ground tarp. The tarp went into the pack; the bedroll was strapped to the bottom of it. She kept the dagger out and handy. Then she followed him, moving as quickly as she could without losing his trail.
He wasn’t hard to track; Elitheris was actually pretty good at tracking game. And this guy was running, and not doing anything to hide his trail. She also could see much better in the dark than he could. There were spots in his trail where, in the dark, he’d stumbled into trees. Elitheris hadn’t seen him, but she could tell that he was Human. Most of the other races had decent night vision. Elves weren’t even at the upper end of the scale.
His trail followed the jungle/field boundary, likely due to his lack of decent night vision. He was dependent upon the light of the remaining moon, Cendinalta, or, as the Humans called it, Kynett. Cendinalta was a few days past full, and waning, but it shed enough light for the man to see well enough to make his way northward along the boundary. She sped up a bit, and soon she could see him up ahead, walking now, occasionally looking back over his shoulder.
But Elitheris had been keeping to the shadows just inside the jungle, and she knew that with the moon up, the shadows of the jungle would be absolutely black, keeping her hidden. It didn’t take her long to get closer to him, and soon he stopped to relieve himself. He looked around, but didn’t see anyone. Elitheris crept closer, silently, stalking him. She’d let him finish his business, then….
The man put himself back in his pants, buttoning them up. Then he felt a weight at his back at the same time a blade touched his throat. He froze.
“Want to tell me what you were doing in my pack?” Elitheris hissed at him.
A series of calculations went through the man’s brain, very quickly. He was being held by a woman, and she hadn’t cut his throat yet. She had asked him a question. And she seemed smaller than he was. It all pointed to her not necessarily wanting him dead. So he took a chance, and slammed his elbow back, hoping he could break her grip before she could slit his throat. His elbow connected with her face.
She reeled back, one hand going to her bloodied nose and cut lip. The other held the knife, but it was no longer at his neck. She struck with the knife, plunging it into his thigh. “Who are you?” she asked.
His only response was a cry of pain as the blade sliced the muscles in his leg. It collapsed under his weight, and he went down to one knee, one hand in a fist, the other trying to staunch the flow of blood that stained his pant leg.
“Why did you try to steal from me?” she asked, dodging his flailing fist.
“Didn’t steal,” he said, swinging his fist at her again. It failed to connect, and Elitheris struck him on the head with the pommel.
He groaned in pain.
“What were you doing then?”
He remained silent, and she struck him in the forehead with the pommel of the knife again, opening up his scalp and causing him to topple over. She’d knocked him out.
Elitheris stood over the unconscious man, with no answers. But she didn’t want to kill him. “What am I going to do with you, you little bastard?” With some rope from her pack, she tied his arms behind his back.
She used some bandages from her pack to bind his wounds, muttering expletives the whole time. Some of her blood, dripping from her nose, stained his shirt. She didn’t care, but it was a reminder that she should probably do something about it. She pinched her nose, and tasted blood from her cut lip. She waited patiently for the bleeding to stop.
Elitheris looked around, and saw that there were crews in some of the fields, even in the middle of the night. She could tell that they were Goblins and Orcs, both species that were at home at night, and quite often nocturnal. The Orcs especially preferred the night; their vision included heat, so during the day they were often overwhelmed if not wearing dark glasses. Orcs didn’t do well in sunlight in general, as their photosensitivity made them physically ill.
She dragged him towards a pasture nearby. She could see a shepherd there, watching over his sleeping flock.
It was an Orc, and when she started moving towards him, he turned and watched her approach. His sheep were quiet, and there didn’t seem to be any predators nearby, even this close to the wild jungle.
Elitheris dragged the unconscious man all the way to the split rail fence that surrounded the pasture. She wasn’t sure if the fence fully surrounded the pasture—fallow field, actually, she saw as she got close—but it was irrelevant.
She saw the Orc watching her from the other side of the fence. “Hi,” she said. “This guy tried to steal from me, and I could use some help getting him to the nearest town.”
“Hmmph,” the Orc said. “I’m watching the sheep.”
“Where is the nearest town?”
The Orc raised a hand, pointing northward. “That way, about a kilometer. There is a Rural Watch office there you can bring him to.”
“Uh, thanks, but I could really use some help lugging him all that way.”
The Orc thought about it, sighed, and said, “Fine. I’ll help you. For four marks.”
Four marks was the cost of a decent meal, or a very good mug of ale.
“Okay.” The Elven woman fished in her coin pouch, pulling out a silver coin. She flipped it to the Orc, and he caught it, smiling through his tusks at her as he pocketed it.
“Alright,” he said, hopping over the fence. “Let’s get this scumbag to the Watch.” He lifted the unconscious man onto a shoulder. “This way,” he said to her, before striding towards where he had said the town was.
“Thank you,” Elitheris said. “I’m Elitheris, by the way.”
“Grumsh.”
“I woke up to this guy pawing through my pack as I slept.”
“Hmmph.”
“He ran off when I shouted at him. Then I followed him, finally catching up to him back there. Gave me a bloody nose.”
“And a cut lip, and what would seem to be a bruise on your cheek.”
She winced. “Yeah, he got the best of me there.”
He chuckled, a deep rumbling. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s the one who’s unconscious and being carried like a grain sack.”
Elitheris laughed. “You’re right.”
They approached town, a series of dark, low houses, with the occasional larger farmhouse. “Welcome to Smokebury,” Grumsh said. “Sorry it’s under such grim circumstances.”
“Thanks.”
“The Rural Watch office isn’t too far now,” Grumsh said, pointing with his free arm. “It’s on the main street, just up ahead there. The building with the tall lit torch.”
The main thoroughfare of the village was dirt, with sidewalks of wood running up both sides for most of its length. Down some side streets that they passed, Elitheris could see more houses, wattle and daub with thatch roofs. Some were houses with wood siding, but they were in the minority.
The pair got to the Rural Watch office, a small building with a two and a half meter long torch in front. It was about halfway burnt down. Grumsh unceremoniously dropped the unconscious man onto the boardwalk. The fall woke him up, for he groaned in pain.
“Alright,” Grumsh said, pounding on the door. “I’m off to my sheep. Have a good evening.”
“Thanks again,” Elitheris said. The Orc simply nodded, and walked back the way they had come.
The door to the office opened, and she was met by a Goblin, wearing a maroon and gold colored gambeson uniform. His green ears twitched, and he looked first at the groaning man who was starting to try to get up, then up to the Elven woman.
“What have we here?” he asked, hands on hips.
“This guy,” she kicked him in the gut with her toe, “tried to steal from me, and left me this bloody dagger.” She held up the dagger. She hadn’t bothered to clean it off.
The Goblin watch officer looked at the downed man again, noting the bandage on his leg, and the red stain it contained. “His blood?”
Elitheris, guiltily, said, “Now, yes. But it was bloody when he left it in my pack.”
“Okay, lady, you are going to have to start at the beginning.”
“Right. Okay. I was camping in the jungle, not far from the fields to the south of here. I woke to find this guy,” she kicked him again, resulting in him groaning again, “stealing from my pack. Or at least that is what I thought he was doing. He didn’t actually steal from me; instead, he put this dagger into my pack. It was bloody. I scared him off, and followed him. I wanted to ask him questions, but he wasn’t interested in answering any. We fought, I won. I got some help getting him here, and here we are.”
The Goblin was grinning. “Nice. Thanks for bringing him to us. Grab a leg. Let’s get him inside a cell.”
The Goblin and Elitheris each grabbed a leg. The man was awake enough now to writhe and fight, but his arms were bound behind his back, and he really couldn’t do much against his two opponents. “Lemme go!” he shouted.
They ignored him. A second watch officer sat behind a desk, an Orc, who stood when they came into the room. He hurried over to the short row of cells, opening one, then stepping out of the way. The Goblin and Elitheris dragged the man into the cell, then the Orc closed and locked it.
The Goblin brushed his hands in a show of a job well done. “Now, we’ve got some questions for you, ma’am.” He turned to his Orcish companion. “Ulnorg, let’s get her info down.”
“Sure thing, Tejakkis,” Ulnorg replied, opening a ledger on his desk and getting a pen ready. “Go.”
Tejakkis asked Elitheris some questions, getting her name, her business, and the events of the evening. Ulnorg wrote it down in the ledger. “You might have done us a favor this night,” he ended. “A lady named Lynette had been stabbed earlier this evening. It sounds like you might have captured her murderer. Good job.”
“Yeah,” Ulnorg said, “we’ll take it from here. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
“Glad to help.” Helping a community was something she hadn’t done in a long, long time. It felt…good. It had been a while since she’d been able to experience that. She hadn’t been sure if it would even be possible to feel that again. These two Rural Watch officers seemed genuinely pleased with her. She blushed.
Tejakkis looked—really looked—at her for what seemed to be the first time. He noted her features, and her gear. Her bow was beautiful, even if it used Elven design aesthetics. He also noted her quiver, half empty, and the worn but cared for state of her clothes. “I see you can take care of yourself. If you want a job, the Rural Watch could use someone like you.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m just a traveler. I don’t stay in one place too long. I’m actually on my way to Port Karn.”
Tejakkis smiled, showing his sharp teeth. “Well, if you change your mind, just let us know. Or any Rural Watchman.”
“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.” She turned and left. As she did, she could hear the two watchmen starting up on their new prisoner.
She followed the road northward, out of town.
Rewards Granted
A couple of bottles of old, fine liquor, some alchemical potions and unguents, a 4 point powerstone, and a pair of spell books.
4 character points.
Missions/Quests Completed
She explored an old mage's tower, now engulfed by the jungle.
Character(s) interacted with
Smokebury's Rural Watch night crew (Tejakkis and Ulnorg). An Orc shepherd named Grumsh.
Player: Erin
Notes: I rolled crappy damage for the foes; none of the wild animals (wolves or flickerbugs) managed to get past the gambeson. The perp managed to elbow Elitheris in the face, where she had no armor, and did a whole 3 HP of damage. She did well, overall, and managed to control the combats in her favor. She got a chance to use quite a few skills: Acrobatics, Hiking, Running, Climbing, Survival (lots), Navigation, Armory, Bow, Fast-Draw, First Aid, Knife, Naturalist, Stealth, and Tracking. She even used Ignite Fire and Create Fire, and most likely Guide Smoke, although we didn’t specifically name that one (although since she was having a fire each night she likely needed to use it).
Report Date
01 May 2021
Primary Location
Secondary Location
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